Nublar Academy rose from the earth like a fortress built by giants.
It was the crown jewel of Terran military education, a place whose very walls seemed to hum with discipline.
It had been founded five years into the war with Fantasia, the brainchild of a single Class 5 soldier, a man whose courage and strategic mind had earned him a legend that outlived him.
Since then, it had become the proving ground for the Federation's brightest, the one place every ambitious young Terran dreamed of walking through.
At the front gates, a river of vehicles was pouring out students.
Cadets-to-be in crisp uniforms drifted through the entrance in clusters, voices buzzing with excitement and nerves.
Many of the arriving cars bore gleaming family crests, and their passengers were met by servants and bowing attendants before being steered into a separate section.
It was easy to tell who among them belonged to the nobility. They walked like the world had been built to make room for them.
A sleek black car slid up to the curb, and Nathan stepped out.
It was a rental, courtesy of his "father." The thought brought a thin, joyless smile to his lips, and he let it go.
He turned and looked up at the academy, and the smile disappeared.
It was enormous. The main building was a modern castle of glass and pale stone, with towers and battlements that would have looked at home in a fantasy novel, if not for the five skyscrapers that stood around it like armored guards, each one rising hundreds of feet into the sky.
In the morning light, the whole complex looked like a fortress that had been designed to be seen from orbit.
'So this is where it all begins.'
He scanned the crowd as he walked, hoping to catch sight of someone from the main cast.
A flash of a familiar face, a hint of a recognizable silhouette.
But it was unlikely, and he knew it. This was Nublar Academy, the largest and most prestigious in Terra, and the Federation's greatest military training ground.
The protagonist came from the other side of the war, from Fantasia. The people he was looking for wouldn't be anywhere near these gates.
When no one in the crowd stood out, he let out a short sigh and followed the stream of students who seemed to know where they were going.
The waiting hall was a cavernous space under a soaring ceiling, and it was packed with hundreds of aspiring cadets.
This was where they would wait until the examiners called them.
Nathan found a spot near a pillar and swept his eyes across the room, searching for faces he might recognize.
The noise was a constant low rumble of nervous chatter, but it was one particular murmur, rising from the far end of the hall, that pulled his attention.
"Is that really Lenny Patterson?"
"I heard he was attending, but I didn't think…"
"First place is basically his already."
Nathan turned toward the source, and found a boy standing in the middle of a loose circle of admirers.
He had golden hair and green eyes, and a chiseled face that looked like it belonged on a recruitment poster.
He was laughing at something one of his friends had said, easy and unbothered, and the crowd around him gazed on with a blend of adoration and quiet envy.
Lenny Patterson.
Nathan knew the name. In Echoes of War, Lenny was one of the major antagonists: the eldest son of Major Jonny Patterson, a prodigy with a rare talent for combat.
And in this world, as in the novel, he was already rumored to be the strongest first-year in the academy, with a synchronisation rate said to be fifteen percent.
For a sixteen-year-old, that was absurd. By synchronisation rate alone, Lenny already stood at the level of a Class 1 officer.
The hall was still rippling from Lenny's presence when another wave of whispers swept through the room.
Heads turned toward the entrance, one after another, like flowers following the sun.
A girl stood in the doorway.
Her white hair fell nearly to her waist, smooth as a waterfall of silk, and her pale blue eyes seemed to freeze everything they touched.
She was beautiful in a way that was difficult to look at directly.
But it was her face that held the room: calm, unreadable, entirely without expression, as though the commotion she caused was happening to someone else.
"Is that Elizabeth Bathory?" someone breathed. "General Linus Bathory's daughter?"
The name dropped into the room like a stone into still water, and the whispers that followed were softer than before, edged with awe and no small amount of fear.
Lenny, with his rumored fifteen percent, had been the one to watch. Now it was clear he wasn't the only one.
She walked to the front of the hall without hurrying, and as she passed, her eyes met Lenny's.
A spark seemed to leap across the space between them, bright and sharp and unmistakable. Rivalry.
Elizabeth Bathory. Nathan watched her go with a heavy feeling in his stomach. The daughter of General Linus Bathory, head of one of the ruling families of the Federation.
In the novel, she had been a villainess through and through. She had slaughtered countless Fantasian soldiers before finally falling to the protagonist's blade.
He shook his head. And I'm going to be fighting monsters like this in the exam.
"Silence."
The voice was calm. Almost gentle. Yet the whispers died instantly, as though a hand had closed over every mouth in the hall.
Nathan looked up, and kept looking, until his eyes found the figure hovering high above the crowd.
A man, with his hands clasped neatly behind his back and his chest slightly forward, was floating in the air as easily as if he were standing on solid ground.
He had brown hair and a thick beard. Even from this distance, the pressure that poured off him was enormous, a quiet, patient weight that made the air feel heavier.
Most of the students didn't recognize him. Nathan did.
So did the children of the great families scattered around the room, the ones who had grown up with that face on the news.
Adam Armswell. The principal of Nublar Academy.
"Welcome, aspiring cadets," Adam said.
He didn't raise his voice. If anything, it felt as though he were speaking to a single friend across a table.
But every one of the hundreds of young people filling that vast space heard him clearly, each word dropping into their ears as if it had been whispered there.
"Most of you already know my name. I am Adam Armswell, and I am the principal of this academy."
His eyes swept the crowd, unhurried.
"I'll be brief. This academy was founded for one purpose: to turn each and every one of you into an elite warrior. That is all you need to know, for now."
A beat of silence. Then, softly: "Let's begin the exam."